Give yourselves a standing ovation, we’ve reached our ton. And why not celebrate with a cup of tea?
Is there anything more civilised in sport than the cricket tea of a Test match? A ham sandwich here, a sticky bun there and a nice cup of tea to finish before it’s back out for the final session. It’s what separates our great game from other less refined pastimes, without mentioning names. But might the cricket tea, the staple of Test cricket for 136 years, be facing a sticky ending of its own?
In April 2011 Sri Lanka fast bowler Lasith Malinga retired from Tests at the age of twenty-seven, an age when most fast bowlers are coming into their prime. But Malinga called it a day in the five-day arena because he wanted to ensure he was in tip-top condition for the 2015 World Cup. ‘The heavy workload of Tests could lead to permanent injury,’ he said, leaving no one in doubt where his priority lay in international cricket.
The news alarmed England coach Andy Flower, who saw it as another sign that international cricketers are more focused on one-day games than Test matches. ‘The ICC has to address that as a serious problem looming in the future,’ warned Flower, who called on the ICC to guarantee that Test cricket retained its place as the premier form of international cricket and was not sacrificed for short-term financial gain. ‘They have to act very responsibly and make decisions on what’s good for the game in the future,’ said Flower. ‘I’m not sure that’s the case at the moment.’
Flower’s fears appeared well founded later in 2011 when the ICC announced that the first Test Championship involving the top four countries, expected to take place in England in 2013, would not now take place before 2017 at the earliest. ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat blamed the postponement on a lack of ‘support and consent’ from the ICC’s broadcast partner, who it was clear didn’t think much of Test cricket as a spectacle. The MCC described the announcement as ‘a setback for Test cricket’ and wondered whether the Test Championship would be quietly shelved in favour of the money-spinning fifty-over ICC Champions Trophy.
The cricket tea is what separates the great game from less refined pastimes
That prompted Lawrence Booth, the editor of Wisden, to write a heartfelt and thought-provoking editorial in the 2012 edition. Warning that international cricket ‘stands at a precipice’, Booth bemoaned the rise of Twenty20 cricket at the expense of Test cricket. Money was to blame, he said, and to that end India was most guilty of devaluing Test cricket. ‘Too often their game appears driven by the self-interest of the few,’ he wrote, before pleading: ‘India, your sport needs you.’
Even the staunchest Indian supporters of their team found it hard to criticise Booth. In the Test series against England that summer, India – the one-day world champions – were thrashed four Tests to nil, losing the last two matches by an innings. Apart from the redoubtable Raul Dravid no Indian batsman made more 300 runs in the series. Was this proof that the constant diet of Twenty20 and one-day internationals had left Indians able to play with panache but no patience?
If future generations of cricketers the world over grow up without the mental strength to play long innings, then surely Test-match cricket, and its glorious tea, is doomed to go cold.
It will be the end of cricket as most of us know it, certainly as W.G. Grace saw it, when, in 1888, he offered some advice to budding young cricketers: ‘The capacity for making long scores is not a thing of a day’s growth,’ he said. ‘It may be years before strength and skill come and enable the young cricketer to bear the fatigue of a long innings… great scores at cricket, like great work of any kind, are, as a rule, the results of years of careful and judicious training and not accidental occurrences.’
Grace has been dead for nearly a century, but let’s hope that 100 years from now his words about building a long innings will still ring true. A game that can be done in a day is fun, but a match that can produce five days of nail-biting tension is unforgettable.